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Drug Can Help You Avoid Infertility from Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy for young women with breast cancer has a serious permanent side effect: infertility due to irreversible damage to the ovaries. Advertising Policy Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Policy But a new study shows that … Read More

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Less damage

In the study, patients who received a drug called goserelin during chemotherapy for breast cancer experienced an 8 percent ovarian failure rate compared to 22 percent for the control group two years after treatment.

Goserelin is a synthetic version of a naturally occurring hormone. It works by putting the ovaries in a state of rest and prevents their normal cycle. The resting state makes the ovaries less vulnerable to the toxic effects of chemotherapy.

Ovarian failure is when your ovaries no longer work normally. They don’t produce normal amounts of the hormone estrogen or release eggs regularly. Infertility is a common result.

Fifteen percent of women in the study who received goserelin were able to get pregnant and give birth after their cancer treatment.

Just 7 percent of the women in the control group, which did not receive goserelin, were able to get pregnant and give birth during the same timeframe.

“The results found that our intervention, which was giving a shot under the skin once a month before treatment, was able to improve measures of ovarian function,” says Halle C.F. Moore, MD, a breast cancer oncologist at Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Moore was the study’s lead investigator.

“In addition, we saw more pregnancies and more children being born in the group that received the intervention,” Dr. Moore says.

Strong evidence

POEMS is the first study to provide strong evidence that fertility prospects can improve after treatment with ovarian suppression during chemotherapy, Dr. Moore says.

“Preserving ovarian function is a vital survivorship issue for young breast cancer patients. Now we can use an intervention that can improve fertility and help avoid other unwanted effects of early menopause,” Dr. Moore says.

Ovarian failure, or early menopause, is a common long-term side effect of chemotherapy.